TI cuts 1,700 jobs in OMAP shift

SAN FRANCISCO—Texas Instruments Inc. said Wednesday (Nov. 14) it will cut about 1,700 jobs worldwide as part of a previously disclosed plan to re-target R&D for its OMAP product line at the embedded systems market, away from smartphones and tablets.

The announcement that TI would refocus OMAP caught many off guard because the product had notched a number of high-profile design wins. But analysts, particularly Will Strauss of Forward Concepts, said the trend in smartphones is toward integration of the applications processor and baseband processor—a trend TI can't keep up with because it began phasing out its baseband technology years ago.

At the time, TI also noted that Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.—which together dominate the smartphone and tablet markets—design their own applications processors, leaving less of an available market for OMAP to compete in.

In an interview following TI's announcement Wednesday, Strauss said he was expecting TI to cut jobs after changing course with OMAP.

"We knew the hatchet was coming down. It had to," Strauss said. "They had a bloated operation there for the reduced market that they were facing."

But Strauss—who said he was certain TI explored the possibility of selling all or part of the OMAP division prior to Wednesday's announcement—said he was surprised by the number of jobs eliminated. "TI's way is usually more subtle," Stauss said. "But then again, we've got an overall market that is headed down right now."

It looks like both TI and and ST have made the same flawed move. The Samsung/Apple duopoly is coming to and end as Sony/Motorola/HTC make better products (IMO). These companies need a strong competitor to Qualcomm. Following the breakup of ST-Ericsson a TI CEO with any balls would pick up where ST left off and get into bed with Ericsson, undoing it's silly exit from mobile basebands a few years ago.

mobile is rapidly growing area, and mobile processor is at the heart. I'm not sure what else TI has to focus. It's meaningless to look back, but
1. what if TI keep working on modem technology and fight for LTE and try to integrate with OMAP?
2. what if TI keep having digital manufacturing in-house?
TI could have been only company making integrated high performance MP/modem in IDM environment now..
Engineer CEO could have seen this trend, unfortunately sales CEO couldn't...

TI has been on the back foot for quite some time now and may be they didn't feel so comfortable in the digital platform market which is increasingly driven by cost. So good they are moving away to grow elsewhere which is not a bad move overall.
It's difficult for companies to survive in multiple domains when the economy is in a spiral and they may endanger their core business if they are too stubborn to see the reality.

Semis is global, bullsh*t statements send them back do no help. TI make most of their stuff in Taiwan and other Asian countries, to remain competative. tjey where one of the first licencees of Arm.
Secret of success is innovation and margin, AP provide neither. The move is sound, the number is surprising but its fitting the workforce to the on going business

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a salesman CEO is doomed,
just like otellini co. with the ultrabook joke.
their brain is full of $ signs instead of tech.
this is just part of healthy cycle of mother nature. make ppl humble and re energized...

TI leads when TI teams up with industry leader. TI won in Wirelles when we (i was TI in the era of TJE and GDEL) got design-in at Nokia at the time when Nokia was potentialy a rising star. When industry leadership moved away from Modem/Nokia towards aps (to finaly end up at Aple) TI was not there anymore to take risk, to cointinue winning new design, to maintain a pioneer winning fighting spirit, to team up with the new rising leaders.
Then TI reorganized, cut costs, gave up design-in, innovation, risks, investments, Modem design and last but not least IC fabrication.... in my view TI then became a mee-too simply capitalizing on "reuse/implementation" of ARM with DSP OMAP short term non sustainable advance.... One key point is fabrication of advanced technology that moved away from traditionnal SC manufacturing including TI toward global foundries. In the Wireles times TI was winning because TI was leading technology process ahead of competitors (full technolopgy entitlement was the slogan). This competitive advantage is definitively gone, wether TI continues OMAP or not wether TI had continued Modem or not.
So yes i agree TI is missing his former courageous leaders and their challenging startegies , but,let us be fair, TI is also missing technology leadership which is gone for ever.

@sprite0022, :). I am neither PR nor sth, I am a VLSI engineer. I totally agree with you that its a failure on part of TI nobody can deny it but I believe TI has done the right thing by exiting the market where margins are hard to comeby.